Pope Leo warns of dangers of AI, emphasizes dignity of human faces, voices
January 27, 2026
In his message for World Communications Day, Pope Leo XIV spoke of the dignity of the human face and the human voice, warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI), and called for “responsibility, cooperation, and education” to help guide the use of AI.
The Pontiff issued his call in “Preserving Human Voices and Faces,” his message for the 60th World Communication Day (background). World Communication Day will be commemorated this year on May 17, the Seventh Sunday of Easter; it is a long-established custom, dating back to 1986, for the message to be released on January 24, the memorial of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists.
“Faces and voices are sacred. God, who created us in his image and likeness, gave them to us when he called us to life through the Word he addressed to us,” Pope Leo wrote in the introduction to his message, which the Vatican released in Italian on January 24 and in English on January 26. “From the moment of creation, God wanted man and woman to be his interlocutors, and, as Saint Gregory of Nyssa explained, he imprinted on our faces a reflection of divine love, so that we may fully live our humanity through love.”
“Preserving human faces and voices, therefore, means preserving this mark, this indelible reflection of God’s love,” the Pope continued. “We are not a species composed of predefined biochemical formulas. Each of us possesses an irreplaceable and inimitable vocation, that originates from our own lived experience and becomes manifest through interaction with others.”
The Pontiff warned:
If we fail in this task of preservation, digital technology threatens to alter radically some of the fundamental pillars of human civilization that at times are taken for granted. By simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship, the systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems, but also encroach upon the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships.
The challenge, therefore, is not technological, but anthropological. Safeguarding faces and voices ultimately means safeguarding ourselves. Embracing the opportunities offered by digital technology and artificial intelligence with courage, determination and discernment does not mean turning a blind eye to critical issues, complexities and risks.
The message’s introduction was followed by three parts.
Do not renounce your ability to think
In “Do not renounce your ability to think,” Pope Leo wrote that “by grouping people into bubbles of easy consensus and easy outrage, these algorithms reduce our ability to listen and think critically, and increase social polarization. This is further exacerbated by a naive and unquestioning reliance on artificial intelligence as an omniscient ‘friend,’ a source of all knowledge, an archive of every memory, an ‘oracle’ of all advice. All of this can further erode our ability to think analytically and creatively, to understand meaning and distinguish between syntax and semantics.”
The Pope warned that the human propensity to avoid effort, coupled with AI, can lead people to surrender their intellect and imagination and thus bury talents:
The question at heart, however, is not what machines can or will be able to do, but what we can and will be able to achieve, by growing in humanity and knowledge through the wise use of the powerful tools at our service. Individuals have always sought to acquire the fruits of knowledge without the effort required by commitment, research and personal responsibility. However, renouncing creativity and surrendering our mental capacities and imagination to machines would mean burying the talents we have been given to grow as individuals in relation to God and others. It would mean hiding our faces and silencing our voices.
To be or to pretend to be: simulating relationships and reality
In “To be or to pretend to be: simulating relationships and reality,” Pope Leo observed that “as we scroll through our feeds, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether we are interacting with other human beings or with ‘bots’ or ‘virtual influencers.’ The less-than-transparent interventions of these automated agents influence public debates and people’s choices.”
The Pontiff warned:
While this anthropomorphization can be entertaining, it is also deceptive, particularly for the most vulnerable. Because chatbots are excessively “affectionate,” as well as always present and accessible, they can become hidden architects of our emotional states and so invade and occupy our sphere of intimacy.
Technology that exploits our need for relationships can lead not only to painful consequences in the lives of individuals, but also to damage in the social, cultural and political fabric of society. This occurs when we substitute relationships with others for AI systems that catalog our thoughts, creating a world of mirrors around us, where everything is made “in our image and likeness.” We are thus robbed of the opportunity to encounter others, who are always different from ourselves, and with whom we can and must learn to relate. Without embracing others, there can be no relationships or friendships.
“Another major challenge posed by these emerging systems is that of bias, which leads to acquiring and transmitting an altered perception of reality,” he added. “AI models are shaped by the worldview of those who build them and can, in turn, impose these ways of thinking by reproducing the stereotypes and prejudices present in the data they draw on.”
A possible alliance
In “A possible alliance,” Pope Leo said that “behind this enormous invisible force that affects us all, there are only a handful of companies ... This gives rise to significant concerns about the oligopolistic control of algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence, which are capable of subtly influencing behavior and even rewriting human history—including the history of the Church—often without us really realizing it.”
The Pope wrote that “the task laid before us is not to stop digital innovation, but rather to guide it and to be aware of its ambivalent nature.”
“It is up to each of us to raise our voice in defense of human persons, so that we can truly assimilate these tools as allies,” he said. “This alliance is possible, but needs to be based on three pillars: responsibility, cooperation and education.”
In discussing responsibility, the Pope addressed five groups: “those at the helm of online platforms,” “creators and developers of AI models,” “national legislators and supranational regulators,” and “media and communication companies.”
In discussing education, he wrote:
It is important to educate ourselves and others about how to use AI intentionally, and in this context to protect our image (photos and audio), our face and our voice, to prevent them from being used in the creation of harmful content and behaviors such as digital fraud, cyberbullying and deepfakes, which violate people’s privacy and intimacy without their consent.
Just as the industrial revolution called for basic literacy to enable people to respond to new developments, so too does the digital revolution require digital literacy (along with humanistic and cultural education) to understand how algorithms shape our perception of reality, how AI biases work, what mechanisms determine the presence of certain content in our feeds, what the economic principles and models of the AI economy are and how they might change.
“We need faces and voices to speak for people again,” Pope Leo concluded. “We need to cherish the gift of communication as the deepest truth of humanity, to which all technological innovation should also be oriented. In outlining these reflections, I thank all those who are working towards the goals delineated above, and I cordially bless all those who work for the common good through the media.”
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